It's Only a Word
by PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: The "epic" conversation, and ensuing musings. During and directly after 2x20. One-shot.


His bow tie was hanging off of his collar when he came up to her. They made small talk, or their version of small talk, which was harsh and biting for her and languidly serious for him. A song played in the background, heartbrokenly mumbling, "…the bells are ringing, joyful and triumphant."

"I really like this song," said Veronica, smiling in spite of herself and moving to sit on the table. The music made everything vaguely surreal, like a real school dance when senses are dulled by surreptitiously consumed champagne and a slow song played loudly over the speakers.

Then he said he was "tortured," forcing Veronica out of her sarcasm. "Ever since I had my heart broken."

"Hannah really did do a number on you, huh?" She didn't assume that he was talking about her. She had no way of knowing she wasn't just one in his endless line of girls.

"Come on," he said, like she was being stupid, "you know I'm not talking about Hannah."

And then she realized. Her foggy brain registered the he was talking about her, that he was still in love with _her_, and her eyes grew wide.

"I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me."

"Epic how?" she asked. She knew what _epic_ meant; she could define it for her AP Literature teacher or discuss it in an essay. But she didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Logan took an ungraceful slug from the bottle hanging at his side. "Spanning years, and continents…Lives ruined, blood shed…Epic." He gave her one of those stares, and even though it was fuzzy and inebriated, there was an intensity there that made her shiver. "But summer's almost here, and we won't see each other at all. And then you'll leave town, and then…it's over."

"Logan—" She began softly.

"I'm sorry…about last summer," he began brokenly. "You know, if I could do it over…"

"Come on!" She had to interrupt him. His definition of _epic _lined up with hers perfectly, but she still wasn't sure what it meant. She tried to laugh a little, but it the sound got stuck somewhere deep in her chest. "Ruined lives, bloodshed—do you really think a relationship should be that hard?"

The beginning of his sentence was a little slurred. "No one writes songs about the ones that come easy."

She just looked at him, aching for all those things that went wrong. Her mind was racing, but for the life of her she couldn't single out one coherent thought. His hand brushed her check, the side of her neck, and all fuzziness from his expression was gone. She let him touch her. She let herself be passive for a while, but his face moved towards hers, removing the languid screen of alcohol and love songs, and the suddenness of the feelings that exploded in her made her start.

"I have to go. I have—to go."

To be honest, she never imaged that he wouldn't remember in the morning. Considering how drunk he had been, there was no way—but she ignored that, ignored her rationality, because what he had said seemed too important to be forgotten. Somehow, she thought that the lazy, tormented boy she had fallen in love with too long ago would overcome drunkenness through sheer willpower.

"No dice, Veronica," she murmured to herself, sitting in her car outside the Neptune Grand. The residue of tears edged her eyes and marked trails on her cheeks, but she was done crying. Disappointment was nothing she wasn't used to, she told herself. She could get over it.

She let out a cynical little laugh there as she realized that she had literally never gotten over anything. But here—what could she do? When Lilly died, she found answers. When her mother left, she found answers. But with Logan the answers were in plain sight and there was nothing she could do.

"Goddamn _Kendall_," she growled through her teeth, because really, that stung the most. She had no damn pity for his stupid "drowning your sorrows" method of coping. If he wanted to sleep with psychopaths—go ahead, rich boy, but she wasn't going to pity him for it.

But even that, as she thought about it—even that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that things would have been different if she had stayed.

It wasn't as if that was even a logical scenario, because it had taken Veronica years to sleep with Duncan, and that only after she had had a kind of live-for-the-moment revelation that seemed a little silly now. She wouldn't have fallen into bed with Logan just because he had given a drunken speech, even if it was the most romantic drunken speech in the world. Well, obviously not. She hadn't even let him kiss her.

But if she had been a little more drunk, and if she had suspended her overanalyzing for just one night, and if—well, maybe if she had been a _lot _more drunk—she would have let him kiss her. And maybe she, instead of Kendall, would have woken up in his bed.

And then things would have been different. But they weren't. Logan was in his hotel room having definitely good sex with his friend's stepmother, and she was feeling cold and rejected in the parking lot. (Swiftly exiting the parking lot, to be precise.)

That seemed to happen a lot. Veronica generally tried to stay away from self-pity, but that _did _happen to her a lot. Rejection. Maybe it happened to everybody, but she had no way of knowing: everything she knew of life was rejection and malice. That was what came of being a P.I.'s daughter, but some people had to have good lives, right? Some people (other people, maybe, but still) had to have epic romances.

Right?

"Keep telling yourself that, Veronica Mars," she said into the wind.


End file.
